MEGA-Post!

Hi Friends!

Boy... It's been quite a few days since I blogged - but I have been eating!

Back at Christmas, a group of my yoga students gave me a big huge gift certificate to one of Santa Cruz's fancier veg restaurants: Cafe La Vie. I've been there a couple times before and found it to be really expensive, insufferably slow, and a bit too raw for my digestive track. But I had this gift certificate ... so my aunt L (also vegan!) and I set out to see how much we could spend! Well, we were very pleasantly surprised!! The menu was a lot bigger than last time, the servings were bigger, and the service was quite speedy. Right on.

It is pricey there, but it's also almost all organic, and the entrees come with a big yummy side salad. We ordered 2 entrees & shared them. This is our Hummus Lasagna - good!

This was our raw meditteranean pizza. It was also very good. Raw food is not very easy for me to digest, but I was reasonably comfortable after eating half of this.

We also ordered drinks - L had a glass of organic vegan wine, and I had a fruit smoothie.

These raw dehydrated onion rings were only so-so... but how could we resist trying them?

We also had dinner with our friends Victor and Jocelyn and their little daughter Dalia this week. It was so fun. Victor and Jocelyn are both vegans, so that's extra fun. Jocelyn is a nutritionist & she and I have taught quite a few "intro to vegetarianism" and "intro to veganism" classes together. They're both really super people - and great parents too! I made dessert & bread, and they made dinner.

Here's the bread I made (the no-knead again!)

For appetizers, we had some of the bread, olive tapenade, pesto, pepperoncini, & sun-dried tomato paste. It was yummy.

Victor made some delicious sage-y white beans.

Jocelyn made a huge dish of roasted veggies, all sorts of good stuff in there!! The peppers and eggplant were my favorite. She also made some really tasty pineapple seitan, which I really loved, but forgot to take a picture of it !

Here's the salad!

For dessert I made the "Freeform Applesauce Galette" from Fran Costigan's book. This is my first time finally getting around to making something from this book, and I wasn't disappointed. It was quite simple, very low in sugar, and very very good! It was especially tasty because I used some of my own homemade applesauce, which is extra chunky & delicious! If you've got this book, I really recommend this recipe.

Yesterday afternoon I hung out with my nephew. It's been HOT here lately (82 degrees!!!, sorry cold ones out there!) - so I was a little surprised that he wanted to bake. We got popsicles first, played tag, and then made some cupcakes. We made the Fluffy White Cupcakes from Vegan Lunch Box. I really love this recipe! I used half white whole wheat flour, and half applesauce for the oil. They turned out amazing! He was in charge of the food coloring, so the frosting turned out seriously ORANGE. Isn't my little nephew a cutie? I'm also teaching yoga in his 1st grade class... which is so fun. What a bunch of spazzes!

Finally, tonight I made a tofu scramble. I ended up making SO MUCH FOOD! ha ha. I guess we'll be eating this for breakfast tomorrow too. But that's no problem, because it was really good. It's got tofu, beans, potatoes, chard, tomatoes, red onion, green pepper, parseley, garlic, brocolli, cumin, basil, turmeric, and salt and pepper. Oh yum. We had it with salsa, which was extra good. I almost never make tofu scramble... why?! It's so easy and filling and yummy!